


Spacedust & Nightlights

by BamSara



Series: Cryptids, Emotions And The Possible End Of The World [3]
Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Bickering, Blood, Dib is exhausted and really needs some sleep, Gir is a rabid toddler, Hurt/Comfort, Indirect Kiss, M/M, Misunderstandings, Nightmares, No beta reader, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to past works, Sleep Deprivation, Two-Shot, Zim is bad at feelings and is hiding a lot, but only a lil bit, light Violence, space travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:02:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23579605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BamSara/pseuds/BamSara
Summary: Bad nights happen sometimes. That's normal, Dib's been through them before. The easiest solution to fight the nightmares is to avoid them completely. Simply don't sleep. Easier to do when you have a distraction, especially if it's in the form of an alien Invader who's got this brilliant idea to kidnap you, fly you out to the middle of the solar system and not be entirely truthful in his reasoning for it.Dib is exhausted, Zim is being vague and Gir is currently chewing on some questionable objects.
Relationships: Dib & GIR (Invader Zim), Dib/Zim (Invader Zim), GIR & Zim (Invader Zim)
Series: Cryptids, Emotions And The Possible End Of The World [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1611253
Comments: 95
Kudos: 1370





	1. Abduction

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so this was the one-shot I've had sitting in my WIPS for a while, except now it's a TWO-SHOT because as I kept writing, it got too damn long, and I know some of you guys really don't like the super long chapters lol. This didn't turn out the way I wanted it to, but hey uh, what do I have to lose? Also, don't look at me if the grammer and spelling is weird. I no longer exist after I hit post lmao.
> 
> Note: Nothing really warn-worthy in this chapter, though the next one might include some major symptoms of PTSD/depression/anxiety. This fic goes along with the other's I've written in this collection, but you could probably read it stand-alone if you wanted to.
> 
> (Summary and title subject to change, because I'm picky)

Dib wakes up with a jolt for what feels like the third time for the night, hopes for morning light to grace his eyelids and instead finds a blurry, blinking bright red shrouded in darkness from what he can only assume could be from the alarm clock he hasn’t replaced since he was twelve.

The room is dark and moonlight shining through his open window barely illuminates what little shapes he can make out, but they’re blurry anyways and there’s too much adrenaline rushing through his system for him to even attempt to ground himself. He doesn’t pant, he’s learned better, but deep breathes through his nose work well enough when you exhale through your mouth and repeat slowly. Repeat, again, and repeat, until his heart rate has slowed down enough that Dib closes his eyes and doesn’t see nightmares hiding behind his eyelids.

It’s just one of _those_ nights. They happen sometimes. It’ll pass. Eventually. He just has to wait it out.

He forces himself to exhale and sits up straight, one hand running through his hair and the other dragging down his face. His eyes stung and there was the slightest bit of perspiration on his forehead, no doubt sweating out the fear in his sleep from whatever he saw. He pulls back his hand and frowns to himself when he feels the tremble in his fingers, a shaking motion that usually goes away on it’s own if he leaves it be.

With a resigned sigh, Dib’s shoulders slump and again, runs his hands down his face, pulling at the skin around his eyelids and cheeks as he brings the hands down like it’ll wipe his memory of the last hour for him. He could try to go back to sleep, sure, but what would be the point? Third time wasn’t the charm and Dib has an itching feeling that neither would be the fourth, or the fifth, and he was doomed another sleepless night with aching eyes and heart palipations.

He’ll have to find something to do until morning, or until he passes out from exhaustion, because as tempting as simply lying down sounded; he wasn’t too keen on the idea of staying idle when his brain didn’t exactly have a shut off switch for unwanted thoughts and images. That’s fine. That just happens sometimes, he’s used to it. Maybe he could work on filing those investigations in the meantime, review some ghost footage and send a couple emails out that were way overdue.

Dib opens his eyes with a sigh, blinking the sleepiness out and gazing out into the darkness. Air felt good and fresh in his lungs thanks to the open window’s ventilation, the slight chill coming from it making the warmth of the covers much more inviting. It was lulling, soft and an easy way for his body to ache to bury underneath the covers. But Dib knew better. He’s fallen for that sort of trap before. No, he needed to get up, do something else. Anything else.

Using his research to distract himself from the nightmares didn’t exactly take him away from the problem, but there’s a better sense of control one has when you’re writing up reports of mythical monsters verses memories of them chasing you down, familiar yet not personal anymore, and you can still taste the blood in your mouth when you wake up to the dark-

Wait. Why was his window _open_?

There’s a weight shifting at the end of his bed.

Dib, with all the reflex of a surging fear coming back in full force, shoves his hand into the night stand’s drawer as fast as humanly possible. He knocks something over in the process before grabbing a flashlight, scooting back until he hit the bed frame and flicks it on, wildly swinging the beam forwards.

The blinking red he originally thought to be his alarm clock _hisses_ at him.

Zim holds up one clawed hand in an attempt to shield his eyes from the light, a blurred image of him to Dib though the human can hear his teeth gritting as it stings. A moment passes, Dib realizes there’s no actual threat in the room (his body seems to disagree) and forces the tension to leave his shoulders, slumping against the bed frame and letting out a huff of air that feels like overdue relief in his lungs.

The nerves linger. How long has been Zim sitting there?

“Why are you awake, Dib?” Zim’s voice is full of accusation, and Dib does not miss the irony. “Don’t humans sleep at this hour?”

It’s a stupid, rhetorical question. Dib swallows a lump down his throat, keeps the light focused on the blur and bites back the urge to loudly accuse Zim of breaking into his house when he knows he shouldn’t expect anything different from an Invader. “Well I would be, if some alien scum didn’t rudely interrupt me.”

He can’t see the details of Zim’s face, but the red narrows at him in a way that makes his skin tingle. “It wasn’t me that woke you.”

Fingers grip a little bit tighter around the flashlight. Dib settles a deep frown in his face and forces himself to sit normally, no longer slumped back against the bed frame but leaning forwards. Something bumps up against the ball of his foot when he shifts and while the urge to kick Zim off his bed was tempting, he decides against it. “What do you want, lizard?” His voice was low with sleep and a little irritated. “Come to kill me in my sleep?”

A shape of a smile glints in the dark. “Don’t be ridiculous. I want you conscious when I kill you.”

“How thoughtful.” Dib’s free hand reaches out to the end table again, patting down the wood as he talks. “You didn’t answer the question.”

There’s a curt, hushed chuckle from the darkness, but Zim doesn’t say anything more than that. Dib tries not to think about how long the alien might have been there as he searches for his glasses. “Spying on me in my sleep, Zim? That’s creepy, you know.”

“I haven’t been here long, idiot boy. And you’re one to talk, I’ve seen your Zim shrine.” Zim scoffs. He’s talking hushed for once. Dib might have been impressed. “I will forgive you because I know that I am just too _amazing_ for you to resist.”

Dib’s face curls into a disgusted frown. “It’s not a shrine, you narcissistic freak. It’s alien research.”

“Yes, poorly conducted research. Most of your theories are all wrong, by the way.”

Dib ignores the jab at his ego and peels his eyes away from the alien to glare into the dark corner where his hand was searching. He’s checking the inside of the drawer when his bed creaks, weight moving from the end to the middle. Dib feels something crawl over his legs and a lump form in his throat, freezing and gripping the flashlight harder to use as a weapon if need be. A shape leans over the side of the bed, snatching whatever Dib had knocked off to the floor and back up again as he presses back into the bed frame, heart skipping a beat and goosebumps itching to get away-

His freehand is grabbed and something pressed into his palm. The shape pulls back until it sits in the middle of his bed. Zim tilts his head at Dib’s action, waiting for him to realize that his glasses were dutifully sitting in his hand. He blinks, coughs the awkwardness away and settles the glasses on his face. He does not say thank you to the now clear view of Zim staring at him with odd expression.

Dib is the one holding the flashlight, but it strangely feels like he’s the one under the spotlight. Deflection always worked, most of the time. “Why are you here, Zim?”

Zim grins, and the light glints off his teeth too sharply for Dib’s liking. “Am I simply not allowed to visit a _friend_?”

Dib huffs through his nose. “While you thought I was sleeping?”

“I was going to wake you first, Stink-boy.” The alien speaks like it was obvious, but the creeping feeling in Dib’s chest tells him that’s not the entire truth. “I have my reasons, don’t be so full of yourself. Zim was merely checking on something.”

Dib immediately turns his flashlight on himself, patting down his pajama shirt and looking for anything weird. Any alien device or bug that Zim could have done to him in his sleep, or even sharpie marker that the alien could have taken to his skin (it’s happened once, and Dib walked downstairs to breakfast covered in Irken symbols unaware until Gaz mocked him for it) and when he finds nothing out of the ordinary, turns the flashlight back on Zim and cocks a brow. “Checking on what?”

Zim’s eye twitched. “The brain-invading robot bugs I laid underneath your pillow.”

Dib leans forward, checking underneath his pillow with lightning speed and only pauses when Zim snickers at the action. “Moron.”

“Should of figured.” Dib settles his pillow, sending a glare towards the alien’s direction and decidedly takes that as his cue not to press the trespassing issue any further. Zim was not known to comply when he has a smile like that. “Could you save the pranks for another night? I’m too tired to deal with you right now.” That comes out a little harsher than he mean’t to, but he’s honestly too exhausted to care. “Unless you’re here for a super important reason, bug off.”

“Zim DOES have a super important reason, to which I will not disclose to you, worm-boy.” Zim’s voice gets a little louder as he talks, hand waving him off and Dib cringes at the volume. He moves as he speaks, bed creaking underneath his weight as he half-stands and grips the edges of the window seal. “Quit your upset fidgeting and put on some decent clothes and shoes.”

Dib huffs at the sudden command. “I’m comfortable, so no. I’m not changing.” Hopefully that’s enough of a hint that he didn’t really feel like leaving for anywhere either.

Zim simply deadpans at him, two Pak legs inching out as he leans forwards out of the window and into the night. “Fine, both don’t blame me if you freeze to death later.” Whether or not he missed the hint or blatantly ignored it is anyone’s guess. “Just be ready when I return, stinky.”

And without any further explanation for what he was doing, why he was here or when he was coming back, Zim jumps out of the window and Dib waits three, maybe four seconds before leaping up and shutting it closed. He digs through his drawers for a simple lock before clasping between the metal window frame and the handle, locking it nice and tight. It might not have been Membrane lab type of security, but it was something.

Satisfied with the lock and the concept of doing something that might get on Zim’s nerves, Dib curls the comforter around his shoulders and waits. He sits there, crossed legged, flicking the flashlight on and off, wasting the battery and eyes drooping until the sound of something hard lands on his rooftop. There’s a scrambling noise, loud but quick enough that if it didn’t wake up his family the first sound, it wouldn’t the rest.

A scuttling noise of something hooking itself to the gutter. Zim appears, hanging upside down from his Pak legs at his window.

Dib cannot help the snort that rises when Zim gives an offended gasp at the sight of the lock, and has to stifle his laughter further as the alien tries to pull up the glass, only it not to budge as Zim’s mouth moves in what Dib assumes to be low curses towards him.

The Invader swivels upright, clutching the window frame and giving Dib a burning glare through the glass barrier. His claws tap impatiently across the frame, mouth down turned and waiting. The request is obvious: open the window.

Dib leans forwards, cups his hands around his mouth and breathes fog against the glass. He writes a careful, mirrored ‘FUCKYOU’ with his finger and watches as Zim wrinkles his face at him, unamused. It’s not surprising when a third Pak leg extends of out his back and angles itself at the window, or more specifically, the spot where the frame clicked with the lock.

Call it curiosity, boredom or exhaustion, but Dib doesn’t stop Zim as the alien jabs at the frame, muttering unheard curses all the while. Instead, with the comforter pulled over his shoulders, DIb folds his arms over the window pane, face close to the glass and watches as the alien tries to pry open the window until he becomes frustrated enough that he lets out a agitated groan, digs his claws under the thin line where the window meets the frame.

Dib blinks the sleepiness out of his eyes, watching calmly as the Invader on the other side of the glass curses at him. The lock seems to bend at first before snapping loudly and Zim laughs in triumphant as he pries the window upwards. “Your pathetic defenses are NOTHING-!”

Dib catches it with his hand when it’s only open a few inches, pushing his face towards the opening and whispering low. “What’s the password?”

The anger and victory in Zim’s face melts into confusion, Pak legs lowering him until his face was also against the glass opening, meeting Dib at eye level. He thinks for a long moment. “You’re ugly.”

“Wrong answer.” Dib goes to shut the window but it’s pushed upwards until it smacks loudly against the top of the pane, Zim glaring at him with a mix of frustration and something else.

“CEASE THIS. You are wasting my time with your foolish games!” He doesn’t hold back the volume of his voice this time around. Zim cranes forwards using his Pak legs as leverage and Dib yelps as hands curl around his shoulders, quite literally snags the ends of the blanket draped around his frame and uses the wrap around to pull Dib _out_ of the window. “Why can’t you just cooperate?!”

A door opens somewhere in the house right before he’s hoisted upwards and towards the roof, but Dib no longer cares about being quiet.“ Cause I’m being fucking _abducted!_ ”

Zim shuts Dib’s window with his foot and scuttles upwards with the flailing weight in his arms. “SILENCE YOUR SQUABBLING. ”

Dib throws a punch, catches an antenna by a hair-width and instantly regrets it when the Invader loses his balance. There’s a stumble and a struggle, gravity tilts back and he hears a curse in Irken above his head before claws dig into his torso and drags the human alongside the brick of the house. Pak legs make a clacking noise as they scramble across the metal of his rooftop.

The Invader quite literally tosses him in the Voot (Dib had a solid suspicion that’s what was the noise on his rooftop) and hops in himself, closing the windshield and leaving Dib to recollect himself on the tile floor. The teenager lands on his ass, groaning at the bruise soon to form and opens his mouth before a wave of fear and recollection washes over his face and he braces for the impact of being slammed back against the floor.

Gravity doesn’t hit him, but something else does. Metal konks against his forehead and Dib scrambles for a moment to pry the giggling ( _giggling?_ ) thing off before holding it outwards at a safe distance.

Gir hangs from the grip Dib has on his single antennae, face wide in a crazed smile and arms reaching out to grasp at his face. “YOUR HEAD STILL SMELLS LIKE A PUPPY!”

Dib blinks, shakes his head and drops the hanging Sir unit to the floor. “What is _with_ you and that?”

“GIR! Stop that!” Zim calls over his shoulder, eyes locked on the sir-unit though his hands tap on the dash without a need to look at the buttons. “Give the Dib his pathetic breathing thing.”

Gir screams, claps his hands and scuttles over to a wall with a port sticking out at an odd angle. Dib watches curious as the robot hooks grabs the port cord, popping open his hand and sticking it inside. He hears clacking and rummaging as Gir pulls out a multitude of items. Some of which include: a paperclip, a game controller with the wire snipped off, two dollars, a ball of lint and mold and other gross substance, a leaf, a stuffed pig covered in what Dib hoped to be just slobber and finally a make-shift, oddly molded mask that looked approximate to fit the dimensions of a human face attached with a long tube back inside the sir unit’s head.

Dib looks to Gir, then to Zim, back to Gir, and all but scrambles for the ejection button before a clawed hand snags him from the collar of his shirt and thrusts him down into the pilot seat. Zim frowns, holds Dib down with one hand and reaches out his free one, Gir running up (he trips over the blanket Dib had left in his scrambling) and placing the the mask into the alien’s hand. The tube extends even as the robot runs, sprawling over the floor for an uncounted length.

Dib snarls in Zim’s face, craning his neck away. “No way. No fucking way. That’s got some sort of-” He struggles, prying the alien’s hand off and attempting to rise again before a knee finds his stomach. When the mask comes closer, he snaps at it. “Alien restraint device! Poison, or-or SOMETHING! I haven’t forgotten, Zim-!”

“You moronic, idiot, simple creature! This device is to ease your pathetic brain and body meats in adaption when we breach into space, not to incapacitate you!” Zim spits, urging the device forward. Gir is shill laughing in the background. “If Zim wanted you incapacitated, I could have done so easily without the use of any tool!”

Dib’s furrowed brows lax, and he stops struggling. “We’re going to space?”

His answer is an eye roll (at least, he thinks its an eye roll. It’s hard to tell when Zim doesn’t have any pupils) and the alien leaning back from the human, taking his knee off and situating himself on the other side of the pilot seat. It’s a tight fit, but Dib presses far back as he can manage, legs pulled up to his chest and noting to himself that Zim was well within kicking distance if he decided to try anything funny. When Zim forgoes speaking for pressing a few more buttons, Dib’s confusion comes again. “You didn’t say anything about space?”

Zim’s head moves very slight in his direction, red narrowed at him, but not in hostility. “Does the Dib-stink not want to go?”

Dib blinks. “I mean, yeah I’d like to go. It’s just you never said anything before hand and this is all sorta sudden. I’m still in my pajamas-”

The Voot jolts at the press of a button, shooting up into the air and upwards at a speed that presses Dib harder into the cushion of the seat and a sharp pain in his mouth. It gets colder, goosebumps running over his arms for more than one reason. Gir’s screaming laughter echoes in the Voot as the lights of the night time city rush over the windshield, further until the clouds began to thicken and thicken until it was dense enough to cover the glass in a dark grey with only moonlight peaking through. The grey turns to white, then dark again. Dib watches with wide eyes and his teeth still piercing his tongue.

Somewhere between the break of Earth’s atmosphere and space, the Voot stops rather abruptly. A clawed hand presses the mask harshly onto his face, covering his mouth and nose and holds it there.

“Breath, you ungrateful cretin.” Zim grumbles. Gir makes fish noises.

Dib tears his eyes from the windshield and glares at him. He opens his mouth to argue, stopping before he does because within a second the fresh air fills his mouth, nose and lungs. It’s easier breathing, cleaner, pure oxygen rather than the polluted mess back on Earth. It’s cool, and akin to drinking a cold glass of water. There’s also a weird taste to it, but he doesn’t know if that’s something in the gas or if that’s just the blood on his tongue.

After several seconds of simple breathing, he catches Zim’s smug look and hates that his own frown is hidden behind the mask. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Zim smirks at the muffle of his voice and presses another button. The Voot moves forward, coordinates already inputted. There’s a jolt and suddenly the speed is even. Stars rush by in a blur of lights and colors, but in the cockpit, time feels still too slow. “You’re welcome.”

Dib’s thanks is a swat of the Invader’s hand, taking it’s place on the front of the mask and holding it to his face. “What is this?”

“Cleaner air that what you were breathing on your disgusting planet. I’ve installed more air tanks to the Voot’s storage since our last trip. It should be sufficient enough for not to pass out like a pathetic smeet.” The alien rises, snatching up the blanket left over on the floor and tossing it over Dib’s head. “Zim doesn’t feel like dealing with your gross, unconscious body during the duration of this.

The investigator pulls the comforter off his head, jabbing out as Zim promptly shoves his feet away from his side of the seat. “Gee, thanks.”

“You whine when you’re sleeping.”

Dib is going to ignore that. “What about him?” He tilts his head over in Gir’s direction. He taps on the front of the mask “What does he have to do this this?”

The robot in question was pretend sleeping, one eye peaking open to see if the other two were watching before ‘sleeping’ again. Gir fake snores lead into little giggles, realizes he’s been caught, then shouts the letter ‘Z’ repeatedly and loudly. Zim shrugs. “He wanted to be the filter.”

Amber eyes fall to the ball of mold, lint and something else Gir had left sitting on the floor and the realization clicks. “Ew.”

Gir extends one arm, scoops the ball up in his tiny hand and shoves the monstrosity into his mouth. “Meatball!”

Ignoring the absurdity of the sir unit (who was currently busying himself attached to the wall by bending the paperclip into something that looked relativity like a pig), Dib turns back to Zim. He asks the first question of many. “So where exactly am I being kidnapped to?”

“Your race calls it Saturn. That miserable, hot gas planet in the middle of your solar system.” Zim activates autopilot and flicks a switch. Another space juts out from a wall, this time larger and vertical. The alien gets up from the seat, walks over to it and plucks several alien looking items out from the container. Dib squints at them. It looked like some weird, sci-fi alien armor. All of it different shades of purple. How fitting. “If your big head cannot pertain to the planet I speak of, it’s the one with the rings on it, Dib-stink.”

Dib sends him a sleepy, irritated look. “I’ve been to space before, asshole.” Bus rides into a inter-dimensional wormhole to a room with a moose, interplanetary fights by steering an entire planet. Man, his twelve year old self wasn’t exactly cautious when it came to protecting himself from space’s radiation and endless vacuum. “And anyone who’s ever gone to middle school knows the solar system, idiot. Especially me. Look at who you’re talking to.”

Zim’s response is a side-ways glare, fitting the armor to some sort of charging station he’s popped out of the wall and checking a few things before falling back. Lights flare up on the armor, pinks and purples, making it easier to see little details Dib didn’t notice before. Smaller tubes around the torso, plates along side the gauntlets and boots that had some sort of bulky build to them. A space suit?

Dib’s curiosity beckons, but he keeps quiet as Zim pulls something else out of the drawer and shuts the panel back into the wall. He holds something cylinder in his hands, like a jar of some sort. Glass and plain looking. It disappears into Zim’s Pak and the alien turns to give him a long sided look. “Is the mask working?”

Dib blinks, inhales, exhales and sends a glance towards the (still-fake sleeping) Gir. “Yeah?”

“Your heart rate is slow, the same rate that it usually is when you’re unconscious.” Zim states bluntly. Dib doesn’t know whether to be impressed or creeped out that he remembers what his body vitals should be when he’s sleeping. Whether or not Zim picks up on the discomfort however, doesn’t show. “Do you feel faint? Sick?” Concern might have been in his voice, but his face twists into a hint of disgust. “If you puke in my Voot, I’ll have your organs turned into syrup.”

“It’s cause I’m relaxed, you dumb lizard.” It’s only half a lie. Sleepiness could make one feel pretty sloppy anyways. Dib sinks further into the seat, horizontal and using the blanket over his shoulders to fold around him and cushion his neck. He smiles when Zim returns to his spot only to find Dib’s legs sprawled all over his half of the chair with an annoyed sneer on his face.

Zim swipes at Dib’s socked feet and the human pulls them back just so he doesn’t lose a toe or two. “Relaxed.” Zim repeats. There’s a scoff in his tone as he sits down. It’s still a tight fit, but he doesn’t say anything about Dib’s feet resting against his thigh, though. “You let you’re guard down too easy, Dib.” He shakes his head, clicking his tongue. “Who’s to say Zim isn’t going to maroon you on some forgotten wasteland planet?”

Dib brings the mask down and lets it settle in his lap so he can yawn. The air immediately tastes different. “I’m exhausted. Cut me some slack.”

There is an immediate change in Zim’s facial expression. Faint surprise or disgust, maybe even a little concern in there. Was there any acne on his face? Rare but occasional stubble? Or did Zim just get a reminder on how huge his head was and Dib could expect an insult in T-minus 3…2…1…

He does not expect for Zim to lick one claw and wipe it across his bottom lip. “Why do you bleed from the most minor of things?” He scoffs, claw trailing down to swipe hard at a dried blood spec on his chin. “You have no defenses, not even against yourself.”

One second, Dib realizes with a sudden ache that he had completely forgotten about his bitten tongue. Two seconds, the shock dissipates and Dib does what any other exhausted, irritated and slightly intimidated teenager would do in this situation: bites down on Zim’s finger.

Zim yelps, retracting his hand and shaking it as if he were putting out a fire. Dib spits out the odd taste on his teeth while the alien snarls at him. “You sniveling, little worm! How DARE you disgrace your future overlord with you gross, disgusting-” He cuts himself off in a manner of angry gibberish, finger jabbed in Dib’s face again, although now out of biting distance. “I should rip out your teeth and let you watch as a flick ever single one of them out of the airlock-!”

Gir ‘wakes up’ with a giggle. “I wanna go out the airlock!”

“N _O_. There will be no more space adventures for you! Not after last time!” Zim’s finger of accusation turns from human to robot and trails the little thing even as Gir unhooks himself and scampers up to the pilot seat. “You cost Zim several THOUSAND space monies when that happened. Bad, Gir. Never ask for that ever again!”

Gir climbs the back side of the chair, inhales and makes one, very loud, very earsplitting cry (Dib winces and yet Zim doesn’t even flinch) before leaning forwards and toppling over into their collective laps. Dib slinks back when the robot cartwheels forwards onto his side but doesn’t fight it when he shimmies underneath the cover, completely hidden aside from the single antenna that was sticking out and tickling Dib’s nose.

Gir was metal and cold and sapping all of the body heat from his chest but Dib really couldn’t find the energy to care. He was tired, eyes drooping and mind still at the edge of competence even in the face of stars and space and everything he’s always doted on all around him. Maybe if he were in a better mood, he would have tossed (or at least, kindly plucked) the clingy robot off, especially since he kinda smelled. But tonight’s Dib was a complacent Dib, so he settles with sigh and lets the blanket cushion him.

Gir decides this is a perfect time to fondle and make biscuits into Dib’s shirt. He peaks down and cocks a brow. “I thought you were supposed to mimic dogs.”

Zim’s hand drops, one antenna dropping lower towards him. “You really are tired, aren’t you?” In more ways than one, but Zim continues before Dib could answer. “Too bad for you. Zim requires you awake.”

Resisting the urge to kick him, Dib shifts so that his legs were swung over to the front, now sitting properly in the chair. He mindlessly swallows back any remaining blood taste in his mouth (and any lingering nervousness) before speaking. “Hard to stay awake when I’m being bored to death.”

It was a lie, but an antenna twitch tells him he got on Zim’s nerves anyway. A offended gasp bellows out. “Zim is doing something NICE for you and you _dare_ to say you are not entertained?!”

“Getting kidnapped while I’m feeling like shit isn’t exactly my idea of fun.” Dib scoffs at him, trying to subtly play off looking well composed even if mind was hazy and Gir’s antenna almost went up his nose. “Looks like you’re having a swell time, though.”

“Nonsense! Your very presence repulses every fiber of my being.” A clawed hand waves in front of his face and directs his gaze forwards to the dashboard. “Activate what little brain cells you have left remaining, Dib-stink. You have an incredible honor tonight of being in my ship, and I would be sourly disappointed if you wouldn’t remember any teachings tonight simply because you can’t manage enough fuel for your puny, inferior, flesh brain.”

Dib’s eyes drag to the points on the dash where Zim was pointing, leaning forwards. A mass amount of buttons, levers, switches on screens that sometimes change color or even places. It was confusing, and he could barely understand half of the Irken popping up. Even then, it disappeared as soon as it appeared, replaced with new symbols before Dib could mentally translate it. “Uh-”

It’s slow and there’s a sudden snap in front of his vision. “Eyes here, Dib.” Zim demands. His claws linger on a button, not touching it but hovering there on display. “This here is the button you need to press before starting the engine. It starts all the pre-check systems that makes sure the Voot is in working order, checking for any errors before starting the engine.” He claw trails over to a triangular button. “This is the button is what actually starts the engine, but it’s not the one that turns it off. There’s no correlation, unlike your petty Earth cars.”

Zim pauses only momentarily to make sure Dib was watching. He finds amber eyes staring at him in confusion. “What.”

“Moron. The Voot’s systems are older, they-”

“No, no, I didn’t mean that.” I mean-“ Dib cuts him off, shaking his head. ”Why are you telling me all this to me? About your Voot, I mean.“ He questions. ”I thought you hate the idea of me piloting. You’re starting to explain to me like I’m going to fly it or something-“

“You’re _not_ going to fly it.” Zim quickly interrupts.

“Then what’s the point?”

Zim’s gaze lingers on his face, trailing down to the mask still sitting dormant in his lap, tube still attached to the Gir hidden in the blanket before rising back up to his face again. Claws tap against the dashboard. An antenna twitches twice. “Do you want to try and ‘ _sleep_ ’ for the duration of the ride instead?”

A tightness forms in Dib’s throat. “No.”

“Then pay _attention_.”

He returns to explaining without another argument, and Dib doesn’t know which one of them Zim is trying to distract from the blatantly obvious: Dib or himself.

It’s better not to question it. At least, not out loud. The Voot, as upgraded as it may be, felt claustrophobic enough as it is. The dark corners of the cockpit reminds him of the dark corners of his bedroom, except in space it’s colder, quieter, and his nightmares usually started out in a scenario like this.

Dib bites his lip to wake himself up and leans forwards, out of their respective personal space and tentatively listens as Zim tells him which buttons controlled air circulation and which ones opened up the snack departments he had stashed in the back. As smoothly as he can, he takes the mask and tubing, tucks it back inside Gir’s head and shut it closed.

* * *

It’s been an hour, maybe an hour and a half and despite the fact that his body is absolutely begging him for some sort of rest, (Eyelids heavy, brain hazy and just the sore ache of the human body wanting to desperately being awake past it’s limit) Dib is wholly and utterly lost in interest of alien technology, and he only begins to notice when Zim starts getting annoyed with his bombardment of questions.

“What about this one?” Dib juts a finger out at a button (a big yellow one with a weird symbol on it, protected by a small plastic covering) He’s not pressing it of course, but he still sees the flashed panic in Zim’s eyes as his finger hovers over it. “It looks important-”

His hand is slapped away. Zim hisses at him, which isn’t a particularly good feeling because they’ve moved closer as the minutes passed. The realization doesn’t hit Dib until he feels spit hit his cheek and instinctively cringes backwards. “Insolent-fool! Don’t touch that! You’ll doom us both!”

“What? Is it like a self-destruct button?” Amber eyes narrow at him, darting to the button. Curiosity and fear battle in his mind. His mouth twitches into a smile when Zim sputters in front of him. “Why do you have a self-destruct button in your own space ship?”

“It’s not a self-destruct button. If there was any reason Irken technology would have to be destroyed, the pilot would self-destruct _inside_ the Voot, idiot boy! Any self-respecting Irken knows that!” Zim waves a hand out over said control, perhaps just in case Dib got a little too curious. “That button opens Gir’s storage unit, and Irk knows _what_ he has stuffed in there while I wasn’t looking.”

“I put a clown fish in there!” Gir (who has somehow turned upside down in Dib’s lap, metal feet knocking against Dib’s chin, much to his chagrin) perks up and dives for the button with a battle cry. “My clown fish!”

Zim catches him by the neck with little effort and chucks him across the Voot. The robot bounces on his head a couple of times before skidding and coming to a stop against the far back wall, screaming all the while. “ _MY CLOWN!_ ”

“GIR! What did I tell you about bringing Earth animals into my Voot?! Especially fish-creatures!” Zim yells, dragging claws down his face in a fit of frustration. “They DIE, Gir. Now I’m going to have to clean it’s corpse out! And it’s going to _stink_!”

Gir flips back upwards on his feet. “He was alive when I put em’ in there!”

“Wait, wait. Hold on.” Dib interrupts, continuing even when neither alien nor robot pay him any mind. “What do you mean the pilot self-destructs-?”

A beeping noise cuts him off and Dib wants to punch the damn dashboard for tearing what little attention he was gathering away. Zim ignores the question completely, whether because he didn’t hear it or simply forgoing to answer it Dib isn’t sure. A couple of symbols flash up across the windshield like a holographic screen. He’s only able to catch a few of them before Zim presses a button and the display disappears, turning to Dib with a smile that usually was followed by a new, evil plan. “Finally!”

Zim jumps from the seat, jolting Dib in the process because the human may or may have not been using the alien to lean on simply because he’s too tired to sit up straight, bolting for the charged armor (space suit? It’s gotta be a space suit. It just looks like cool sci-fi armor. Maybe it was both.) on the wall and hurriedly detaching it.

He puts it on with all the ease and routine of someone who’s been doing it for years. It looks heavy, weird, and downright _cool_. Dib bite the inside of his cheek and tries not to let the jealously in his chest show in his voice. “You know,” Dib starts off, standing up and letting his legs stretch. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in anything like that before.”

Zim pauses, half-way through pulling a heavy looking boot up over his shoe. It makes a notable clunking noise as he puts his foot down. “Amazed, Dib? Some of the finest Irken technology us Invaders have access to.” He presses a button on his collar and an shimmer of light forms a dome around his head before fitting to the shape, even around his antenna. Zim holds his arms out, wide grin and with a prideful pose.“How does Zim look to your feeble, human mind? Impressed, yes?”

“You look like a dollar store Halloween ornament.” Dib slaps his hand over Zim’s face and whistles when his palm hits something solid mere centimeter’s from the alien’s skin. “Gimme.”

Zim slaps his hand away, one outstretched to keep the Dib at bay, the other coming up to disable the headpiece at the collar. “No! Zim is the only one leaving the Voot tonight!” The shimmering light disappears and Dib wonders how comfortable his antenna are within the shield. “The Dib will stay here and- _GIR!_ ”

Both boys turn heads to see said robot one inch away from pressing the big yellow button, eyes wide and caught red handed. “ _Feeeeeeeeeeshhh_ ”

Zim promptly walks over, grabs the robot by the neck with one hand and tosses him over to Dib as the robot explodes into a giggle fit. “You will stay here and watch Gir for me while I…run an errand. It shouldn’t take me long.”

“What?” Dib catches Gir out of pure reflex rather anything else, looks down to the laughing robot before up to the alien again. A disappointed, sour look comes across his face and he non-nonchalantly tosses the robot back to the alien like a basketball. “Do I look like a baby sitter to you?”

“You look like you’ll die in the vacuum of space and Zim is the only one with a suit!” He catches Gir with both hands, tossing him back. “You are lucky I even brought you here at all. Be grateful of Zim’s charity!”

“You abducted me!” Dib catches him. Gir is already splaying out his arms like an airplane for when he throws him back. “You haven’t even told me why!”

Zim catches Gir but the leg and does an underhanded toss this time. “I have my own reasons! Important reasons! Shut up!”

Dib catches Gir with both hands, but doesn’t throw him back, not even when the robot flails and screams ‘again, again!’. He flips the robot upright in his hold and watches with faint amusement as Zim raises his arms instantly as if to catch him, realizing the robot was never coming and quickly putting them back down.

The teenager sets the robot on the floor, inwardly groaning when Gir practically throws himself back into his grip as Dib tries to rise. He sends a pitful look over his shoulder. “So, did you bring me up here for a real reason? Or am I just here to baby sit Gir while you do cool space stuff?”

Zim dramatically taps his chin with one claw, looking off into the distance as if contemplating something. “Well, Zim could always shoot you back down to Earth if it was more preferable to you.”

“Get hit by a meteorite.”

Zim laughs, a _real_ laugh, Dib notes, which takes him only lightly by surprise (and maybe a bit of alarm) but he doesn’t dwell on it for long. Instead, his attention drifts from alien to the windshield behind him. Or more importantly; the planet they were coming up upon.

The Voot enter’s Saturn’s orbit and stays there, drifting just a bit further out than it’s rings, but close enough to admire the beauty of it all. From this distance, Dib can make out the difference in colors of the planet, the dots that were in it’s rings and the spots where it was more saturated the most. It doesn’t look like how it does in the textbooks, and it was a starkness different look than how it was from all the pictures he was able to dig up online. Different from the stickers on his laptop. Different compared to simple photos and artistic renderings.

Saturn is beautiful with the little light given to show it’s colors and rings. The space around it, however, is dark and empty. The Voot feels a little bit darker.

“This is our stop.” Zim breaks his train of thought, pressing on the collar and letting the dome reform and shape to his head again. He presses a button on the dash.

Dib can’t say his reaction wasn’t a bit delayed when a circular hole opened up on the floor, exposing the vacuum of space and it took him almost three seconds total to realize and stubble backwards away from the entrance. “What the fuck-!”

Zim laughs at him, and Dib would love to curse him out if not for the sudden jump in his heart making it a little heart to breathe at the moment. (There were other reasons too, but he’s going to blame the small scare for this.) The alien crouches to the hole, even waving a hand out over it for show. It dawns on Dib that nothing in the Voot, passengers included, has been sucked into the vacuum of space to a untimely demise.

“There’s a invisible force field around the Voot that protects the inside when enabled.” Zim states rather proudly. “You can push through it, and it feels a bit like jelly, but it won’t break. It’s used for easy transport in and out of ships that are too small for airlocks. Look.” He picks up one of the many items Gir left out from his head rummaging, a single paper clip, and pushes it through with his thumb.

Dib watches the paper clip drift away into the unknown and feels a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Wow.”

“Irken technology, Dib.” Zim chuckles. “I knew you’d be impressed.”

The praises are ignored for sake of morbid curiosity. Dib crouching down to the hole and with hardly any hesitation, goes to push his hand through the opening-

A three clawed hand catches him by the wrist and Dib gets a face full of upset Invader. “Have you lost your brain meats? Do you want to lose that hand? Freeze it off and let space amputate it from your wrist?” Zim brings it back up, shaking his arm as he yells and quite violently at that. “Has lack of ‘sleep’ killed any sense of self-preservation or are you just stupider than I originally thought?”

Dib pauses, blinks slowly and doesn’t so much as change expression at Zim’s upset yelling. “Oh, yeah. Sorry.” He has to think to form his next words for a moment. “I’m just tired.”

A pause. Zim looks at Dib for a long time. He eventually lets go to stop a crying Gir from skipping directly into the hole to go after his now-lost-forever paperclip. “Zim should not take long.”

“Yeah, okay.” Dib falls back to sit on the floor, pulling the blanket tighter around his shoulders. He yawns a big one and doesn’t care about the weird stare Zim is giving him afterwards. “Don’t you need a cord or something to keep you from drifting off into space?”

Zim moves his legs to the front, a heavy motion, and swings them over for both Dib to see and to drop them downwards into the hole like a scuba diver reader to jump. With a little motion of his ankle, the jets at the bottom of the shoes become obvious. “Faster and easier to maneuver in space.”

Jealously rears up in Dib again. He feels his own mouth twitch into a pout and waves a hand. “Okay I get it. Irken Technology. Show off. Go ahead and do whatever you have to do. I’ll be here. You know.” He picks up Gir by the leg and waves him around like a toy. “Just hanging out with your dangerous sidekick.”

The alien scoffs. “Do NOT let him into his storage unit.”

Dib rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Be safe.”

Zim pauses mid-drop.

A sudden realization, followed by an uncomfortable frog in his throat and heat in his face. Dib bites his tongue and tastes blood again. “If you don’t get hit by any asteroids. Bring me back a souvenir. I don’t want to have come out here for nothing.” He quickly adds.

Zim looks weird, half of his body out in space, but Dib is currently trying not to look at his expression and instead busies himself with finding something to entertain Gir (he pokes at the stuffed piggy before regretting it when his finger comes back wet) in the meantime. Behind him, he hears a low mumble, followed by silence.

When Dib turns back around, he finds Zim gone and the hole disappeared, the floor reforming to it’s original shape. It doesn’t come back even when he presses his palms to the floor and imagines himself falling through and into the void outside of the Voot. He wonders what it looks like when it’s not hidden behind a windshield. Dreams tell him that starlight would not be enough to save him if he fell.

There’s a clunk noise. Dib looks up.

Zim is currently hovering outside the windshield and using it to ground himself. Gir has _also_ somehow suction-cupped his face to the glass and clawing to get to his master. So Dib is going to have to deal with _that._ Great.

One hand keeping the blanket secured around his shoulders, peels Gir off the windshield with his other hand (which surprisingly takes a good amount of effort) and watches as Zim calmly smears _something_ red and orange thinly across the windshield. “What is he doing now?”

Gir runs in place in the air, pointing with a grin. “Look! Look! He’s a writin’ us a message!”

In what Dib assumes to be some sort of dust from space rock, Zim, with a mischievous grin, writes ‘FUCKYOU’ in the smear.

Finding the windshield wiper button was easy considering Zim had just shown where it was merely minutes ago, and Dib’s laughter fills the Voot as the wiper smacks the Invader across the face. “Stupid bug.”

Zim can’t seem to hear him, and Dib doesn’t know if there’s any radio capability in the suit that comes directly from the Voot. But the alien shakes the hit off, tongue hissing out in a manner that he can’t tell is a playfulness or a genuine threat before Zim rockets off.

His form gets smaller and smaller. Space is dark and light is bare here. Dib watches as the purple and green of the alien fall into dark, only the lights of his Pak and the rockets pinpointing where he is. Then those fade, and there is nothing. Dib’s laughter dies.

The cushion of the pilot’s seat sinks too much when he sits in it so he settles for sitting on the floor instead. A shiver runs down his arms that he couldn’t exactly blame the cold on, but he curls further into his cape of comforter anyways. Eyelids droop and the cockpit is swaddled in vacuum-like silence, save for the occasional beeping and the squeaking noise of Gir trying to stuff all of his toys back inside his head.

A small laugh bubbles up his throat, but it doesn’t escape his mouth. “How long do you think he’ll take, huh?” He asks Gir, (whose mouth was full of stuffed plush pig, so the robot shrugs instead of verbally answering) “Not long?”

His response is Gir choking. Dib reaches out to pat the robot on the back and wrinkles his face when he hacks up not one, but _two_ stuffed pigs. The sir unit grabs the one covered in the most mysterious ‘slobber’ and thrust it Dib’s direction.

“Oh.” Dib picks it up with his index and thumb like a soiled tissue. “Looks horrible. My sister will love it. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome!” And then Gir proceeds to re-’eat’ the first piggy. Dib decides not to question it and quietly sets down his ‘gift’ to the side.

Gir could be…weird, but this was manageable. Not exactly the best for conversation, but enough to keep Dib awake. He hoped, at least. So far he’s avoided the rest of the nightmares of the night thanks to this whole scenario. It’s tiring, and it certainly didn’t do his eye bags any favors. At least Zim’s whole ‘abduction’, an odd timing as it were, provided a good distraction in the meantime.

He yawns a big one, eyes closed and full lungs. He finds alarm growing in his chest when it’s difficult to open his eyes again, but it’s blanketed exhaustion and sluggishness. The pilot’s chair was soft and therefore a risk, but now even the cold floor looked inviting for a nap.

No. It’s one of _those_ nights. He can wait for it to pass. Except in space, there is no difference between night and day.

Dib looks out to through the windshield, eyes glazing over the partially smeared writing. He’ll just have to wait.


	2. Supernova in a Jar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dib decides to be nosy. Zim returns and hell ensures, but not for the reason you think. One thing leads to another and Dib wakes up to a face ful of alien, has a heart-to-heart and receives a particular gift. Gir is wreaking havoc pretty much the entire time.  
> (Check updated tags)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *slaps this chapter on the ass* This leaned a bit much into the Zadr territory than I meant to, but uh. You know sometimes these things just happen. :)  
> I've taken liberties into my own hands when it comes to sci-fi logic and Dib's gift. You'll know it when you read it.
> 
> Note: Chapter contains sleep terrors and sleep paralysis, shown and discussed symptoms of PTSD and mentioned graphic violence, but nothing actually done, just empty threats.

It has only been perhaps half an hour, Gir is already on his third remix of Peace is Nice and Dib wonders if this entire trip was to serve as some form of torture that Zim wanted to put him through.

Said robot was upside down on his head, bouncing up and down (can metal even do that?) in a circle for the last ten minutes, singing at the top of his artificial lungs and filling the Voot with his shrill voice. The small space amplifies the song almost, and Dib has stopped trying to ask him to be quiet after the first five times, instead trying to think of the positives while he has his hands firmly pressed over his ears. At least there was no risk of passing out; not a living soul in on the planet could possibly fall asleep listening to this.

Gir flips over onto his feet while singing the chorus for the 50th time. “Peace is Nice! Peace is Nice!” He spins around like a ballerina, tip toeing towards where Dib is handled on the floor watching the scene with a tired, dead look. “Peace is better than…!” Gir stops, legs wide in a stance, and stares at Dib expectant.

He does not risk removing his hands from his ears. “What.”

“Peace is better than…?” The little robot stares at him. Hard.

Dib sighs. “Chicken and rice-”

“ _CHICKEN AND RICE!_ ” Gir’s face slams onto the floor of the Voot and his limbs flail as he screams. Dib would have sighed a heavy one if he wasn’t starting to wonder just how much oxygen should he preserve.

Still, when Gir’s body stops twitching and reduces to still, metal doll laid face down on the floor, Dib feels concern. He stretches out his leg and hesitantly pokes the robot’s head with his socked foot, hands still over his ears for obvious reasons. He pushes Gir’s head a little and a muffled giggle sounds out from the tile, so he pulls his foot back just in case the sir unit had any impulse to bite off his toes. “You’re insane.” Dib’s own voice sounds muffled through his hands. “I think I understand why Zim is strained all the time. Do you do this every time you guys go on space adventures?”

It’s a rhetorical question he doesn’t expect a coherent answer for, but Gir’s head does a complete 180 so he’s facing the ceiling, tilts his gaze back up to Dib and whines. “Noooo…”

So that’s a yes. A tired sigh breaks heaves through his lungs and Dib removes his hands from his ears, slumping back against the wall even further. The blanket around his shoulders cushion his body against the metal and make the position more comfortable than it should of been. Then again, his body’s standard of comfort was lowering by the second. He straightens his posture and sits cross legged, hunched forwards and letting the blanket settle on the floor. Maybe the cold in the Voot will shake him awake a little more.

Dib doesn’t know how long it’s going to be until Zim gets back, but when he does, he’s gonna beat him up. Metaphorically. With words and insults. He’s way too exhausted to be throwing punches.

Boredom is risky, at least Zim would have kept him…not-bored. Stupid.

Luck smiles in his favor when Gir directs his attention to the fallen blanket, kicking his legs across the floor to scoot his body over to it (little metal sparks fly up with a scratching noise when he does) before wrapping himself into the fabric and rolling around on the floor in incoherent giggling. That was probably going to smell weird later. At least he's preoccupied.

Pushing himself to stand, which is a strangely harder task than it usually is, Dib walks over to the control panel and plops down into the pilot's seat. It was a comfortable seat, sure, but it felt a lot bigger when it wasn't being crammed in by both human and alien. Just an absentminded observation, one that’s pushed into the back of his mind as he's gazing over the dash.

Zim somehow explained the workings while also keeping everything vague, giving the basic instruction Dib needed to pilot the Voot in case of an emergency, but nothing too detailed that he would be able to steal it and fly off into space on his own without the risk of something mechanical going wrong, and Dib having no idea how to fix it. Or maybe Zim was just trying to intimidate him with that scenario. Regardless, for supposedly super advanced alien technology compared to Earth, the Voot was garbage in Irken standards.

The inner workings of Tak's ship looked _nothing_ like Zim's Voot, save for the obvious Irken aesthetic. While Tak's ship was a challenge to repair, it was still simpler to use than the mass amount of controls currently laid out in front of him. Hell, if the personality encoded in the ship was relatively pleasant (and he uses that word lightly) then all the hard parts of piloting and system maintenance were left up to it, leaving Dib the fun steering, chasing and sight seeing, assuming it’d ever make it into space. Sure, he could pilot Tak’s ship without her interference, but that was after over years of memorizing which button did which, what Irken symbol meant what and there was only a couple he needed to remember.

The Voot had more complicity to it than it should have been. There were three different buttons to check the ship’s engines, several switches for the single task of turning on and off the lights, which he had to turn in a specific order unless he had Zim’s biological signature, which accepted his left hand to turn the lights on, and his right hand to turn it off. Overly complicated and far outdated by Dib’s understanding of modern space travel by alien standards.

Yet, as Dib drags a finger across the surface of the dash, feeling flat surfaces rise up to his skin to act as buttons, lights following his touch as he drifts, he will admit he might be a little impressed. Maybe just a little.

He doesn’t know if Zim built this ship from scratch or merely stole and modified it, but it’s been personalized. He remembers the Voot’s size and inside appearance when he was younger, small and hardly anything to snuff at. But the cockpit got bigger, there were drawers in the walls, capable of charging an armor suit in under an hour from solar energy and somehow able to fend off the vacuum of space with a mere force field that wasn’t visible to the naked eye. It’s clear that the Voot is old and scrappy in some respects, a polished up piece of junk, but a completely personalized one. Dib wonders how long it might have taken Zim to install the larger oxygen tanks, and where that task fell on his priority list verses all the other improvements he could have made.

Dib presses his mouth into a line. Maybe Zim would teach him more about engineering ships when he came back. It might inflate his already enlarged ego, but the hope was still there. Dib is just impatient. He’s been sitting here for maybe an hour now.

He glances towards a certain yellow button. Maybe he can get his revenge early and fix his boredom issue in one-go.

With the sense of a brain driven by curiosity and sleep deprivation, Dib flicks the plastic covering up and presses the button. Behind him, the sound of metal jutting out from the wall tells him storage has popped out, and the immediate, loud, ear-piercing screech of Gir taking notice almost pops his ear drums. He flinches, shoulders risen up to his ears. “Fuck!”

“That’s a BAD WORD-” Gir is cut off mid-sentence by a slam of metal. Dib turns around and finds that said robot has quite literally, dived into the small, 3-foot tall closet that has opened up and threw himself all the way through until his head clunked against the back. “I’m TELLING.”

Dib’s legs feel numb when he tries to stand. “No, you won’t”

“Yur righ!” Gir’s voice is muffled like he’s chewing on something.

He drags his feet over to the closet and doesn’t feel guilty when he drops to his knees. His body hates him right now. That’s fine. Let it, he’ll give it the rest it needs when they get back to earth. He’ll tough it out a little while longer, even as his eyes are starting to sting. Though, his hand reaches out for the blanket left on the floor, lets it pool around his waist and quietly notes to bring his trenchcoat the next time he’s got plans in space.

The closet’s door is a simple metal panel that swings the rest of the way open with ease. Everything inside is a mess, jumbled together in a pile in a way that looks similar to a child would stuffing everything underneath their bed trying to clean their room. There’s an array of items, ranging from stuffed animals (Gir is calmly setting the pig he chewed on earlier with all of it’s friends), crayons with paper, a unrefrigerated box of hotpockets, what appears to be a large, fluffy dog bed and a small, plastic box with marker drawn all over the front of it. It also smelled a lot like baby powder. That last detail isn’t as intense as he thought it would be.

Dib grabs the small box and jiggles it a bit. Items clunk against the sides and the weight is notable in his hands. He pulls it back and gives it another look over. Crude doodles, all done in various colors in marker, of either Zim or Gir himself. It was pretty obvious who’s drawings these were, though there’s a single doodle here and there of a Irken standing proudly that doesn’t look like Gir’s penmanship. His thumb finds the crease where the top begins-

A stuffed punch smacks into his face and bumps his glasses askew. Dib freezes, a small throb in his cheek, and looks down to Gir through partial lens. He’s got a wide smile and a little, stuffed clown fish that looks like it was stolen straight from a Dizney store. “Oh, you have a Nemo toy.”

Gir drags the fish across his face and Dib is quietly thankful that it’s fake fish, and not the corpse of one. “He’s giving you KISSES. _Fish kisses_.” In a way that shouldn’t be physically possible, the metal in Gir’s face bends so he’s got a pouty fish mouth and making bubbling noises.

Dib cranes his neck away, one hand coming to press the fish down. “I don’t want kisses right now.” Gir’s expression deflates immediately, Nemo dropping low and letting out a soft aw. Puppy dog eyes shouldn’t be possible on an alien robot made to wreak havoc and destruction. Dib reaches for a stuffed pig and gently holds it out. A yawn escapes him as he speaks. “Sure he’d love some, though.”

The robot takes the bait like a fish (Dib inwardly cringes at his own pun) and snatches the pig, one hand holds each stuffed toy as he turns towards the closet, latching onto the dog bed with his mouth and yanking it out. It almost hits Dib in the process. It was larger than he realized. Nice, fluffy too. Real expensive looking. There’s no way in hell that Zim paid for that thing.

Dib gets half a face full of fluff as it’s dragged past him. Smelled kinda like bleach and lavender laundry detergent. It wouldn’t be surprising if Zim kept it nice and clean for Gir, or just for his own piece of mind. Said robot drags the bed out to one side of the wall, plops down on the cushion (wow, if only Dib could lay his head on something so soft for the moment) and furiously starts smashing the two toy’s face together while laughing. It’s a gruesome sight. Some stuffing has gone flying. Gir is doing a live action narrative during the process. Dib decides it’s better the pig than him, and turns his attention back to the box.

“It’s probably got some of Gir’s trinkets.” Dib speaks to no one in particular, uncaring if the robot hears him. He’s tired, might as well fall back into the habit of talking out loud. “Marbles or something. Snacks. I know you guys like snacks. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had play-doe in here to eat, ya know.” He shakes it again for good measure. Nothing inside sounds particularly breakable. Dib yawns again and his lungs feel like they’re getting heavier and heavier with every deep breath. “I should buy you some of that slime stuff. It sticks everywhere, hard to clean up. Zim would hate it too.”

His ramblings is met with the combination of the space’s eternal silence and Gir’s ignorant giggling. Dib blinks. The spots in his vision he didn’t realize were there dissipate. He quietly notes it’s been at least a full hour as he lifts the boxes cover.

The paranormal enthusiast in him hopes to see something extraordinary. Maybe gears or alien weaponry, as unlikely as it is. To no one’s surprise, there is nothing of the sort. There is, however, a bundle of papers. Shifting through them isn’t so much difficult as it is when Dib realizes his vision is blurrier than it should be. Adjusting his glasses doesn’t help, but the realization doesn’t click just yet, so the tired mind brushes it off and he brings the papers closer for inspection.

A mixture of documents, all written in Irken and other alien languages he’s never seen before. There’s doodles on the corners of the pages, some crossed out, some torn at the edges. Some are cleaner than others, straight clean lines and clear images of what appears to be hastily made blueprints. Something round with dots on something thin and curved, wires protruding from a socket on the device. Dib is way too tired to try and figure this thing out properly. Just staring at it for a long time makes his eyes hurt.

In the movement to stuff the papers back inside the box, he catches sight of something falling out from the stack. It’s smaller in size, hard to pick up from the floor with the flat of his finger tips and defiantly not a document. A picture, a familiar one. Zim’s snarling face next to a smiling Dib with the Eiffel Tower in the background behind them.

That’s weird. He doesn’t remember ever sending this picture to Zim, or even printing it out.

Whatever. He puts all of the contents back into the box and shuts it closed, stuffing it back into the closet. Zim is already going to be mad at him for letting Gir make a mess, hopefully he doesn’t realize Dib was nosy enough to rummage any further.

Dib stretches his arms upwards, feels something pop and hopes that it’s enough to chase off the haze falling over his mind and body. It not. If anything, a shiver travels up his spine and he curls the blanket to his shoulders, languishing in it’s warmth even though he knows better. Sleeping while sitting upright even was starting to sound appealing. There’s a ache in his head and a relief in his eyelids every time he blinks.

Dib drags his gaze over to Gir, a small thing in the middle of all that fluff and sighs. “Must be nice.” He starts off, catching the robot’s attention. He doesn’t detect the slightest of a slur in his own voice when he speaks, but Gir tilts his head at the sound. “Not having to take care of yourself, you know. Like, sleeping and eating.” Dib moves as he grumbles, scooting over just to sit at the edge of the dog bed. “You can just _go_. Go for hours, days even, without having to maintain your own body. I’m jealous.”

The last phrase comes out even though he didn’t mean for it to. Zim wasn’t here, thankfully, but something in Gir’s face lights up (literally, the blue in his eyes seem to glow even brighter and Dib is reminded with a sting in his eyes just how dark the Voot’s cockpit was) and he unceremoniously stuffed one of the animals into his mouth and points at it for show. “I’m eatin’!”

Dib’s pinches his arm to make sure it hasn’t gone numb. “Cool.”

“We eats ot’s o’ tings!” Gir plucks the pig from his mouth. “Like waffles. And fundip. And tacos. And Ice cream. And burritos. and-” Gir says a word that Dib can only assume to be of alien origin, and he has no hopes of pronouncing himself. “-and candy. And-and, and we SLEEP! Me and Master! We take naps, long naps but we got our eyes ooooopeennnn….” He drawls his words out like he’s telling a horror story, pressing his fingers to widen his sockets.

It’s just enough to shake himself out of the daze he was falling into, Dib cocks a brow at Gir’s sentence, mindlessly pulling at the long tuft of his hair so as the pain kept him grounded. “Sleep? Like, actually sleeping?” He mummers. “Zim is capable of sleep?”

“No!” Gir tosses the second stuffed animal. He giggles when it bounces off the windshield, leaving a slobber stain on the glass. “But sometimes he likes to pretend!”

That didn’t sound right. Then again, nothing that ever came out of Gir’s mouth ever did.

The robot rambles something else, but there’s a wave of exhaustion rushing over him, and it’s a startling alarm that not even Gir’s maniacal giggles is enough to break Dib free of the approaching darkness. Poetic? Sure, but the Voot was drifting in Saturn’s Orbit with a full view of the planet’s beauty. The rings didn’t look as formed up close, but it was memorizing all the same, stars as their compliment. They dance in the front of his vision and seem far too close to be outside the Voot. White spots in his eyes. The fear has been suffocated by the exhaustion.

Gir is spewing gibberish about cartoons, macaroni and friendship bracelets, wrapped around Dib’s arm when all he did was blink. That falling feeling hits him, and reality slams back into Dib with more force than what is comfortable. Dib blinks again to urge the sleepiness out of his eyes. The feeling is persistent. He raises one hand to rub at them and strikes confusion when his body doesn’t respond.

A shift in his peripheral. Dib drags his gaze to the floor, where a hole opens up seamlessly into space. He blinks at it. Weird, he would have expected a sensor or something to have gone off with it. He must not have noticed, his head felt heavy and there was something about the room that looked like the darkness of space was intruding inwards-

A clawed, shadowed hand rises through the opening and grasps onto the edge. Dib’s pulse jumps. “Wha-”

Another hand appears, appendages pulling themselves upwards and following the limbs until something has broken inside. There’s the noise of metal on metal as it scrapes against the side, another sound like a language held drowning under water, or maybe that’s Dib’s pulse throbbing in his ears. It’s quiet when it stands, it has no features that Dib can make out in the dark, straightening to it’s full height and watching as the hole closes and shutting them away.

Two red pinpoints drag across it’s view across the ship, the dash, the closet still open, and finally lands on the human pressing his back against the wall. The shape of a mouth forms and opens, there is nothing but razor glass inside.

That thing was not Zim.

“What the fuck.” Dib’s breath quickens in a mummer. The creature’s mouth widens. It slinks to the opposite wall and becomes enclosed in the dark. Something plastic drops and Dib feels every inch of his skin freeze with goosebumps, hot blood rushing in his ears as he scrambles back, back, _away_ from that thing. “Fuck.” Low pants in fear. His head hits the back wall for the fourth time before he realizes there’s no escape but the here, and the void outside. He doesn’t remember what button opens the exit. He doesn’t have the courage to try. “ _Fuck_.”

It looks back at him. Too quickly, where there was no light sudden there was suffocating color, and red is swallowing the room and suffocating the stars. It’s approaching him, glass mouth opening and closing.

Dib has seen horrible monsters. Fought against them and won. Obsessed with them to the point his bedroom walls were covered in pictures and art of the likeness.

Fear is usually so thrilling. Here, it’s suffocating.

_“_ Don’t…Don’t come any closer.” Dib doesn’t know whether it’s the fight or the flight response winning, (would it even matter?) but he knows the hot feeling flooding on his face is wet and trailing down his neck, soaking his collar. His fingers grasp the nearest solid thing, to throw, to hide, anything and the blanket is the only solace found with his fingers scrambles across the floor. Shoulders hunched up and shaking to the core, he kicks his legs out when it floods closer. “ _No_!”

It stops. It’s teeth are stuck in a jagged appearance that reminds Dib too much of a bear trap. Easy to latch around his neck. Easy to hold him down. A sharp inhale doesn’t bring as much air as he so desperately needs when Dib tries to move to the side, follow the wall, anything only to discover _he cannot move_. A pit of nausea rises, a hallowing feeling in his throat. Dib tries to scream and his voice comes out as a sob. The thing blinks at him.

Something bumps into his face, knocking off his glasses and pressing up against his nose at a horrible angle. (Please don’t touch him. It’s hard to breathe.)It’s enough to jolt Dib out of being frozen, Amber eyes darting down as it presses up against his cheek, his mouth, smooshing against his lip and persistently shoving it onto his face. ( _It’s hard to breathe._ )

A duty-mode Gir with an open head tries to fit the oxygen mask onto Dib’s face, awkward and failing at it. “I’m helping!”

Dib doesn’t know if it was the fear or the shock that did it for him, but his hand lunges out without thinking and grabs the cord, ripping the mask from his face and splitting the skin of the cord where he pulled it the tightest. The sir-unit makes no noise of pain, but the red in his eyes flicker from black to red, staring wide eyed at him in a sense that may have been considered confusion. Dib is too frantic to care. “Don’t come near me-!”

A pressure on his shoulder. Instantly, Dib lashes out at the assailant. The back of his hand hits something firm and something sharp drags across his skin, splitting and drawing blood. A sound bellows out that doesn’t process in his ears and muffled by his own panic, blood pumping in his ears, the smell of his own sweat as he knocks back and kicks at the creature. His foot makes contact and it stumbles, whatever stance it has falls, dropping to it’s knees.

Consumed by fear and the panic one can only feel in a miserable nightmare, the call for help comes out before he can stop it. “Zim!”

The creature hesitates. It picks something up off of the floor and moves it towards his face. Breath hitches, Dib knocks his head back against the wall to crane his neck away from it. It stops moving forwards.

Dib fingers twitch uncontrollably as they curl around the blanket, wrapping it tighter, like a child hiding under their sheets waiting for the monster to go away. “Help.” His voice is raspy. How long has he been crying? “Zim.” Scrambling to scoot away, locked to crawl on his knees. The Voot feels like another dimension, nothing is where it should be. Dib’s hands palm over the spot where the exit disappeared. If he could just get out, get away, scream loud enough that the alien might hear him…“ _Zim!_ ”

There’s a shrill noise behind him. Gir hasn’t moved from his spot, eyes switching from creature to Dib in some sort of alarm. His lungs are getting heavier. “Zim! Ple-” A sob interrupts him mid-sentence, and Dib doesn’t even look at the others. Wide, wet eyes glued to the floor. His finger nails scrape against it as the shape in front of him watches.

“Please.” His vision is too blurred and dark to see. His throat tastes like vomit. “I need y-”

A hand circles around to cup the back of his head and Dib all but jolts, body going tense and locking up as he’s pulling into something firm and grasping. His first instinct to push away fumbles, he’s weak and exhausted, his arms bat at the figure even as it presses his face into it and holds his head there in the center of it’s chest.

There is a part of him, a small part, that is hopeful that Zim will bust in and save the day, like all the good endings have. But he cannot force his body to move and lets himself get dragged down, laying plain and feels his hot breath pushed back up against his face. Dib opens his mouth to inhale and his tongue tastes of cotton.

Something feathery and thin flutter in his hair. Hands are roaming over his back and neck, through his hair, as if to check for something, before rooting themselves. One hand falls to Dib’s middle back where the curve is the deepest, the other rests on his head. Dib wonders if rabbits caught in wolf jaws are held this gently too.

There’s a odd noise pressing against his ear. Memory fades after that.

* * *

…

…

…

The noise gets louder as his senses return to him.

It was strange, not exactly something Dib can describe with ease. It had a particular rhythm to it, like the beat of a heartbeat, but human heartbeats pulse and stop, pulse and stop, in whatever pace deemed fit by the body. This sound never stopped. It went quiet at parts before getting louder, then quiet again, louder, but very quickly like he was messing with a radio volume dial. There wasn’t a pause for it to start up again, just continuously going like an engine, but there was also the physical feeling against his cheek telling him that there was _some_ sort of beat underneath his ear, so there _must_ be a point where it pulsates.

He’s not awake enough to tell. Dib groans, fingers inching up to curl into the comfort of pillow underneath his head.

His knuckles bump into something hard and the bed beneath him moves.

Eyes flying open, Dib lurches back with lightening speed (something that was sitting on his back is promptly thrown off, and judging by the maniacal laughter it can be no other than Gir) and stabilizes himself on his arms, hunched over and rapidly blinking the sleepiness out of his vision. His glasses are gone, but he can still make out the small details at this distance.

Zim’s face is inches away, glaring at him with a blank expression.

Dib stares at him. He swallows a lump in his throat. “Hey.”

His voice cracks and Zim’s mouth twitches at the sound of it. The corner of his mouth looks swollen. The back of Dib’s hand feels covered. “Hello, stinky.”

His breath hits Dib in the face and that’s more than enough to break the confused shock. Dib, in a moment of pure panic and embarrassment, all but slaps one hand down on the center of Zim’s face, pushes himself upwards and off of his body until he’s stable on his knees (there’s a sudden absent of warmth from the back of his neck and lower of his back, the entire front of his body felt a rush of cold) and a putting a good foot or two of distance between the both of them. “What the fuck.”

Zim snaps at his hand as Dib pulls away, partially shoving off his arm and baring his teeth in the slightest of the snarl when the human settles back. Amber eyes glance around quickly. Zim had been lying on top of the dog bed as a cushion. The blanket that was covering the both of them was now crumpled at their knees, still tangled between the two. Gir had landed on his head and is currently using that position to pogo jump.

Dib shuffles in his spot. Zim glares at him. The awkward silence couldn't be much worse, even with the sound of Gir’s head hitting the floor repeatedly in the background.

The silence lasts about a minute before Dib decides that he should be rightfully interrogative for some god damn answers. He tries to muster up his pride, if only to force casualness into his tone. “How long was I out?”

His voice came out hushed and stupid. Zim’s glare relaxes, but still holds him in place. “An hour or two.”

“Okay.” Dib swallows a lump down his throat. His thumbs find each other and a bouncing Gir is suddenly much more interesting to look at than the alien sitting next to him. “Why wa-”

“You _whine_ in your sleep.” Zim cuts him off. “Like a new born smorglag, and you twitch and move like you have squirmy, little worms in your body. Is that normal? Is that what you’re supposed to do when you’re sleeping?” Antenna flick in his direction, eyes look him up and down. “Is there some sort of parasite housing in your body causing this reaction? I can cut it out.”

Color floods to Dib’s face and not in a good way. Always count on Zim to be completely blunt and interrogative. Now would be the perfect time to change the subject. “How was your trip?”

Offense flashes across Zim’s face as he all but groans in annoyance. “Do NOT think you can ignore my questions, Dib-stink, Zim is not a fool!” He yells in his usual loud volume, finger shaking in the teenager’s face. “I left you here for one hour. A SINGLE Earth hour, and look at my Voot!” He does a gesture to the rest of the cockpit. “Look at Zim’s poor Voot!”

Everything is still blurred, but he can make out the shapes and colors well enough. Animal stuffing was thrown all over the floor. The oxygen mask lay useless, the cord appearing replaceable, but useless in it’s current state. There’s liquid in various places that he can only hope to be slobber. The closet (his worst crime of the night, what was he thinking?) was still askew and piggies tumbling out of it as it overflowed. Gir has somehow stuck Nemo to the windshield by using his spit as an adhesive.

Dib presses his lips together and does the slightest guilt of a shrug. “I have no idea how any of this happened.”

One of Zim’s eyes twitch. “You infuriate me.”

“Yeah, well.” Dib shuffles so he’s sitting cross legged, straightening his shoulders and attempts to adapt a sense of normalcy. “You left me here alone.”

“A mistake, clearly.” Zim sneers. His mouth opens again to continue talking, but Dib watches him pause, rethink his wording, before continuing in a completely different, change of tone. “The mission went well. There is no more need for this Sat-Urn’s resources, Zim has acquired what was needed.” Another pause. “And although it is a stupid request, as Zim cannot die, Zim made sure to ‘be safe’ as the Dib-beast requested.”

A new flush of embarrassment runs through his chest and Dib would give anything to know what button would promptly send him out into the vacuum of space right now. A nervous laugh bubbles up in his throat.“So you’re saying if you got hit by a meteorite,you wouldn’t die. You’d just be shooting through space forever?”

Zim deadpans at him. “You are indescribably morbid.”

“You stole my liver once.”

A battle cry resounds out through the cockpit. Without so much as looking away, Zim straightens one arm out, catches Gir by the antenna (he was a few inches from slamming into Dib’s head, and metal against skull didn’t really bode well) and promptly slings the bot away. Gir’s body is covered in stuffed animal armor, taped around his midsection so he squeaks when he bounces off the floor. “I have _two_ livers!”

“We don’t have livers, Gir.” Zim says.

“I ain’t said they was mine!”

Zim’s attention spikes and his head whips around, yelling something in Irken that sounds irritated and spoken much too quickly for Dib to even attempt to translate in his head. Gir’s dialect was strange in its own way, but at least the thought of the sir-unit being in possession of human organs was a distraction. A gross, kind of alarming distraction, but a thought that confused Dib just long enough for his nerves to mellow out a bit. Amber eyes trail over the cockpit. It really _was_ a mess. Worse than how Dib remembered he left it before he passed out. Before he…

Nausea boiling in his stomach. Gaps in memory filled whether by remembrance or imagination, he can’t tell. Memories of a creature invading the Voot, scaring the daylights out of him before pulling him close after calling out for his enemy-turned-friend. Dib glances over quickly. Zim mutters Irken curses, plucking the fabric of his shirt. Something thin picked out by his claws. A tiny dark piece of hair that’s the same color of Dib’s.

Dib is smart enough to put two and two together, and he’s pretty mortified right now.

In that moment,a sharp point presses to the center of his cheek, and Dib freezes. Zim holds his finger there, not hard enough to break the skin, but enough to hold his attention. The alien searches for a word. “Are you ‘okay’ now?”

Tongue dancing in his mouth out of embarrassment. Throat dry, face a little too hot for his liking. “Yeah.”

The prick removes from his face. Dib glances over to see Zim holding something in his hand. The alien is thinking, tapping it up against his chin. “Would you, as you humans like to say,” He waves a hand nonchalantly. “Like to ‘ _talk’_ about it?”

Dib scoffs. “I think I would rather die.”

“Zim could arrange this.”

The object is tossed lightly into his lap. The familiar frame of his glasses are instant to recognize, and Dib fits them over his face immediately. He blinks, once, twice, looks around the Voot, outside to the stars, accidentally looks Zim in the eyes and coughs awkwardly into his fist in the hopes that it will somehow disgust the alien enough to back off a bit.

Instead, Zim snatches the fist, forcibly splays Dib’s fingers open to expose his palm and holds it out between them. “Luckily for you, Zim has already procured a gift for your dying!” A Pak leg extends outwards, something grasped within it’s claws. “Humans always bring items to phoo-nee-rals and graves, yes?”

Dib knows there’s no point in trying to pull his wrist back, so he scoots back and extends his arm as long as it will go to keep his distance. “Yeah, people usually bring items _after_ the person is dead, and it’s usually flowers.”

“Silence! That’s how you attract the _bees,_ Dib! Bees coming for your smelly, decomposing body! Feasting on it! Is that what you want? Zombie bees?” A jar small enough to be held comfortably is dropped into Zim’s free hand. It’s black inside the glass. “Zim has fooled you. This gift was designed for the living.”

It’s roughly rolled over into his palm. Zim lets go and Dib weighs it in his hand, there was mass there, but not entirely as heavy as it should be when it looked so full. It’s not a liquid, there’s no sloshing feeling when he flips it upside down. Dib looks up in confusion, and finds a grin on the alien’s face where there wasn’t one before. “Is this supposed to be some sort of threat?”

“Shake it.”

Dib raises a brow. “What? I’ll break it.”

“You won’t. Zim made it impossible. Do as your future overlord says.”

Fine, he’ll humor the bug. Dib gives it a light shake.

There is suddenly… _color_. Stars. Tiny specs of light exploding in the jar and giving off light, like a galaxies colliding in such a small, confined place. It shines red and blue and green and yellow and others Dib doesn’t think there’s a name for. It casts a glow on his face, reflecting off his glasses and glowing shimmers, sending lights throughout the Voot that make the walls look like stained glass. It’s soft and bright. Supernova in a jar.

“The human internet says that sometimes when a human is sad or upset, that you should give them space.” Zim taps a claw on the lid. “So I'm giving you space.”

Dib’s fingers tremble on the glass. “I think you've misunderstood.”

“Nonsense. Zim is never wrong.” There's pride in his voice. The longer Dib looks at it, the more he sees how fused the lid is to the glass. There is no seam, no longer an opening. “Zim took extra precautions and made the container out of superior irken material. I used to contain a blob once!” His smile widens, falters for just a second, before returning to it’s glory. “I’ve perfected it. You can’t break it, no matter how clumsy you are. Which you are extremely. Zim has tested it.” He thwacks the glass with his finger just for show. "

The light has dimmed to a slow, softer glow, but the colors are still there, casting across their skin and throughout the Voot. Dib flips the jar over in his hands, the colors changing as he does, the stars swirling, like a snowglobe with no sense of gravity. He presses his palm against the glass. His skin tingles.

“Do you ever sleep?” Dib asks.

He doesn’t look up from the jar, but he knows Zim’s face peaks up with confusion. “What sort of stupid question is that. Irken soldiers don’t have a need for such a thing. We aren’t inferior as the rest of you-”

“But _can_ you?”

Zim pauses. “Maybe.” His answer is vague and hesitant. “We can experience a form of unconsciousness. Just not the same as you.”

The Voot is not as cold as Dib remembered it was a few hours ago. He shifts to feel more comfortable, the flush in his face is hidden by the colors casting out of his hands, leaning his back against the wall. When his knees bump against Zim’s legs and the alien moves to sit beside him, it doesn’t feel so wrong. “Do you know what dreams are? How they work?”

“I went to human school, stink-boy. I know everything about your pitful, pathetic bodies and how they work, sometimes against you.” Zim starts off with a scoff. A pause, and he continues with a tone with the slightest bit of hesitance in it. “I know sometimes that they are bad.”

“It’s like a movie in your head that you can’t control, and you’re the main actor.” The tingling in his hands is nice. The galaxies turn red, to purple, then blue. “You can’t control it. Sometimes the movies are of fantasies or adventures, sometimes they can be boring everyday routine, or really weird stuff you’d never do. Sometimes they play memories.”

Dib takes a fist full of blanket in one hand and throws it over the alien’s legs. Zim blinks, looks down at his covered legs for a long second, then kicks off his boots with his heels underneath. He nudges them out from under the comforter and settles there.“Which ones are the bad ones?”

Dib thinks for a moment. “All of them can be.”

“Which ones are yours?”

“…Take a guess.”

Zim’s face is unreadable and unchanging. Dib regrets his boldness when the seconds grow longer, the silence stretches onward and the two are stuck in stare that might have been comical if it wasn’t for the way he liked how the colors changed the crimson to orange, pink, purple and all the shades in between.

“Do you remember when I told you my Pak can experience an… _error_ ,” Zim starts off quiet, sentence contorting at the end like it was painful for him to say. “I think yours is like that one. I’m just awake when it happens, and you whine about it in your sleep.”

Memories of broken mirrors and broken plates. The picture printed in the plastic box stashed back inside the closet. Waking up to a face full of alien, not once, but twice in one night. Maybe there was a different reason why Zim had broken into his room earlier. “There’s a word for what it’s called, you know.”

“I don’t care what you call it. Zim calls it an error!” Claws bunch up into the blanket. There’s an underlying hiss in his throat. “That is why I could…Zim could _understand_ …The issue…the earlier thing-” He cuts himself off, tongue poking coming out for a split second in the weird way he likes to gather his thoughts. Eventually his face twists in frustration to the point where he gives up trying to be polite. “Your fear! Which is acceptable, because you SHOULD fear me, the almighty and great Zim! But I do, yes, ah…understand the _condition_ that would cause you to react in such a manner upon witnessing me.”

Dib’s face contorts into a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance.“If you keep talking, I’m going to figure out some way to throw up in here.”

Zim bares his teeth. “I’ll make you choke on it. And when you’ve suffocated to death, I’ll be decapitating your head and plastering on the wall of my lab.”

“Ouch, harsh.” Dib’s teeth flash too, but the corners of his mouth curl up too high for it to be a snarl. “Do I at least get a plaque?”

“A very large one so it can be seen from underneath the sheer magnitude of your skull.”

“How thoughtful. I’ll keep that in mind when I’m autographing copies of my auto-biography when I’m famous for your dissection. I’ll even put you on the cover.”

Zim scoffs. There’s a smile hidden behind it. “How big is the book?”

“At _least_ the size of my head.”

“Good, plenty of room. You must put Zim’s muscles on the cover and all of my greatness, otherwise no one would buy it.” He holds up a arm for show, giving it a pat and glares at Dib when the human looks like he’s trying to hold back a particular comment. “It’s good marketing, Dib! I’ve seen your human media! It works!”

Dib lets out a snort and Zim kicks him through the blanket. “Okay, okay I get it. Zim muscles is on the agenda.” Dib laughs, and it’s a freeing feeling. It falls slightly, now a nervous chuckle, and he drums his fingers along side the jar’s glass as he thinks for a moment. “I have a question. For the book, I mean.”

Zim narrow one eye at him. “And?”

“Why were you holding me earlier when I was sleeping.” The moment the question comes out, he feels his confidence wavering. “I mean, I’m no-”

“It worked, didn’t it? You were delusional _,_ Dib-idiot. I simply restrained you from causing even more of a mess.” He fumbles with his words for a moment, mummering in Irken before snapping his fingers.“Zim did what was necessary so the Dib fell asleep and stayed that way, there is no more reason to dwell on such a thing. You’re welcome.”

Dib seriously debates on pushing his luck. “You could have stopped once I was asleep.”

“Your fat head TRAPPED Zim! The weight of you was crushing me!”

“You’ve carried me just fine before.”

“Shut up! Shut up. _Shut up!_ ” Zim jumps up suddenly, jolting Dib in his place. “Zim is tired of sitting here! I have many, many experiments waiting for me in my lab and I refuse to sit here and entertain you for any longer!” He marches over to the dash, practically slams down on a couple of buttons and Dib hears the inner workings of the Voot whir to life. Zim plops down into the pilots seat, hands dragging down his face and antenna bent forwards, before letting out a loud, dramatic groan into his palms. “You are insufferable!”

Dib gets up, dragging the blanket with him and without further prompt, forcibly plants himself in the pilot seat next to Zim. Two claws split and a red eye peaks through, narrowed at him. “Excuse you.”

There is something empowering about having your personal space invaded constantly and then to turn it around and give him a taste of his own medicine. The nerves still linger, but a grin crawls onto Dib’s face. He forces his smile to grow wider when he sees Zim growing increasingly unnerved by it.“Is it a crime to visit a friend?.”

The middle of Zim’s face wrinkles and he throws his hands down in exasperation. Dib expects to be shoved unceremoniously off the chair. Instead, claws grab the blanket’s ends and toss the covering over his own legs, quietly muttering something about installing another pilots seat. (Passenger's seat, he quickly corrects himself) “I’m putting electric eels into your plumbing system when we get back to Earth.”

“Just say that you like hugs and I’ll drop it.”

Zim snarks. “Seeing as to how you had the _wonderful_ idea to ruin another piece of equipment of mine,” He gestures to the mask lying useless on the floor, effectively changing the subject. “Don’t blame me if you pass out on the way back.”

Dib slouches, uncaring if his knees bumped into the control panel. “C’mon. You’d really let me suffocate?”

“Your ugly face is better colored pink than it would be purple. But I can change my mind.”

“That is the worst possible way you could have said that.”

The tingling sensation in his fingers has gone away, the pleasantness of it fading. He looks down. The lights in the jar have dimmed. Dib shakes it a little in his hand, and the colors and stars return. “I love it, by the way.”

Zim is mid-motion of punching in the coordinates for Earth when he pauses. Dib thinks an antenna might have brushed over the spike of his hair, but only for an accidental moment.

“Of course you would.” Claws return to buttons and dials. “Anything Zim creates is… _GIR?!_ ”

Dib blinks in confusion. Zim’s face is alarmed, gaze dragged upwards from the dash, and Dib follows his eyesight upwards and over, through the windshield.

Gir floats across their vision and waves before doggy paddling further into space. Zim’s head slams onto the dash. With a long, strained sigh, he gets up and moves towards the space suit.

**Author's Note:**

> hmmmm zim kinda knew what he was doin ngl


End file.
